Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2015
Randomized Controlled TrialApoyo con Cariño: a pilot randomized controlled trial of a patient navigator intervention to improve palliative care outcomes for latinos with serious illness.
Latinos experience significant health disparities at the end of life compared with non-Latinos. ⋯ A culturally tailored patient navigator intervention was feasible and suggests improved palliative care outcomes for Latinos facing advanced medical illness, justifying a fully powered randomized controlled trial.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2015
Objective palliative prognostic score among patients with advanced cancer.
The accurate prediction of survival is one of the key factors in the decision-making process for patients with advanced illnesses. ⋯ The Objective Palliative Prognostic Score consists of six objective predictors for the estimation of seven-day survival among patients with advanced cancer and showed a relatively high accuracy, specificity, and negative predictive value. Objective signs, such as vital signs and blood test results, may help clinicians make decisions at the end of life.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2015
Correlation between the international consensus definition of the Cancer Anorexia-Cachexia Syndrome (CACS) and patient-centered outcomes in advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
The cancer anorexia-cachexia syndrome (CACS) is common in patients with advanced solid tumors and is associated with adverse outcomes including poor quality of life (QOL), impaired functioning, and shortened survival. ⋯ The weight-based component of the recently proposed international consensus CACS definition is useful in identifying patients with advanced NSCLC who are likely to have significantly inferior survival and who will develop more precipitous declines in physical function and QOL. This definition may be useful for clinical screening purposes and identify patients with high palliative care needs.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2015
The need for palliative care in ireland: a population-based estimate of palliative care using routine mortality data, inclusive of nonmalignant conditions.
Over the history of palliative care provision in Ireland, services have predominantly provided care to those with cancer. Previous estimates of palliative care need focused primarily on specialist palliative care and included only a limited number of nonmalignant diseases. ⋯ Future palliative care policy decisions in Ireland must consider the rapidly aging Irish population with the accompanying increase in deaths from cancer, dementia, and neurodegenerative disease and associated palliative care need. New models of palliative care may be required to address this.